Summer Internship Recap with Social Journalism Class of 2019

Paving paths for engaged journalism

Published in

Engagement Journalism

16 min readSep 9, 2019

As the first social journalism cohort with the opportunity to pursue full-time summer internships, the social-j class of 2019 at the Craig Newmark Graduate of Journalism at CUNY reflected on their internship experiences and shared what they learned. Check out what they learned:

Ariam Alula

Identifying local talent to appear on a live television program for BronxNet during my summer internship wasn’t the only thing that led me to have a productive and joyful experience. It was also the joy, connection and freedom that I created for myself to make mistakes and learn from them, both behind and in front of the camera.

In addition to my role as a production and studio intern, I reported stories from neighborhoods including City Island and Hunts Point, which are on opposite ends of the county. My first assignment as a community TV reporter involved reporting on the entrepreneurial energy of craftsmen, painters, book lovers, and other creatives who have their work featured for sale at the Bronx Native Marketplace in the South Bronx. I wrote, edited and recorded tracks for a two-minute news package on how people can come to this marketplace to survey local arts.

When I wasn’t reporting in the field, I was in the BronxNet studio at CUNY Lehman learning the ins and outs of media production as a floor manager, teleprompter and camera crew member three days a week. I booked six dynamic guests for BronxNet’s OPEN live show whose work or life in the Bronx impact others.

Beatrix Lockwood

I spent my summer at The Marshall Project, a criminal justice reporting nonprofit. I straddled the business and editorial teams, helping out with audience development and analytics while also doing community-engaged reporting. I contributed to social media coverage and helped those in the newsroom better understand their readers and where they come from. I also created a discussion guide to help with engagement for The Marshall Project’s We Are Witnesses video series. It will be used at screenings at dozens of Chicago libraries.

One of my favorite projects was this Instagram story featuring excerpts of crowdsourced food diaries, published in real-time to give our followers a window into incarcerated life. (The multimedia editor Celina Fang, social media editor Tatiana Craine, and the artist Janice Wu helped me make it look awesome.) The project helped make August the best month of the year for new Instagram followers. But my favorite thing about the project was watching how people in prison adapted, remixed, and shared the callout among their network. It was, for example, included in a prisoner-run newsletter in Oregon by a man who set up a dedicated mailbox in his prison for collecting food diaries from fellow prisoners. He then compiled them and sent them to me in a mailer. The project has also connected me with new incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated sources and readers.

I will continue to work part-time at The Marshall Project in the fall. One of the things I am working on is newsletter product to better serve a segment of The Marshall Project’s audience made up on non-criminal justice professionals. I’m also working on a crowdsourcing project that will be part of my final semester community practicum with loved ones of incarcerated people.

Danny Laplaza

This summer, I worked as a community engagement fellow for THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit news outlet serving New Yorkers. Under the guidance of Terry Parris Jr., THE CITY’s engagement director, I managed the outlet’s social media accounts, developed engagement campaigns for stories and helped facilitate an Open Newsroom project. I hope to make local news more collaborative by including community members on the reporting about them.

Diara J. Townes

As part of the year-long Media Leadership Program with Newmark J-School, I interned at CNN with the Headline News Specials team in New York City. As their documentary intern, I worked with a team of five producers to transcribe, log, research, and connect with guests on social media for current and future HLN shows, such as Lies, Crime and Video, Sex and Murder and Real Life Nightmares. I also assisted in the turn-around documentary, Vacation From Hell: Death in the Dominican Republic, that aired following the spike in mysterious deaths on the resort island in June. I located and verified pictures of victims online and logged affiliate print and broadcast material for use in the production.

In addition to the internship, CNN led many events, projects and sessions for their interns. My role in the summer group project focused on how we could measure impact for a new show idea for their direct-to-consumer platform, HBO Max. I leveraged my familiarity with metrics and audience engagement and presented this approach to CNN’s top executives, includihng Jeff Zucker. While our group did not win the pitch, my explanation of data and metrics impressed my peers and my team.

Learning the basics of video and show production with the small and mighty HLN-Specials team allowed me to procure an internship with the CNN Documentary Unit for the Fall semester. I will continue providing similar support for CNN Special Reports, as these shows are based on current, political and environmental issues, such as last month’s production — Toxic Tales: Trump’s Environmental Impact with Sanjay Gupta, which premiered ahead of the CNN Democratic Presidential Climate Town Hall event on September 4th.

Erica Anderson

I had the privilege of spending the summer on the west coast as the Community Engagement Fellow at Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, CA with Senior Community Engagement Strategist jesikah maria ross. I was particularly interested in learning about organizing and facilitating in-person community engagement events that encourage “deep listening, radical hospitality, and bridge-building.” This is ross’ speciality.

Over the course of the summer, ross invited me to be her collaborator on several projects. Halfway through my fellowship I was able to organize and help facilitate several community events. And based on our work, CapRadio greenlit a long term investigative reporting project on sexual assault in Sacramento.

At the beginning of the summer, sexual assault survivors contacted the station to share their experience about reporting their assaults to law-enforcement, which ranged from frustrating and insensitive to deeply traumatizing. They also expressed disappointment with how they and their stories were treated by the media. The journalists and editors realized that they needed guidance to find ways that they could report on the subject without doing any more harm to victims and survivors. That is when they came to the community engagement team and asked for help.

A major tenant of ross’ work is that bringing community stakeholders together with journalists can generate storytelling that has greater impact in our communities and help public radio staffers figure out how to make a difference. We needed help identifying what barriers to justice may exist, and solutions to those barriers. We intended for this to be a long-term project, and community input would be crucial in helping us choose which issues to highlight, as well as how to produce journalism that will improve outcomes for survivors and increase overall understanding of sexual assault and its aftermath.

We held two off-the-record gatherings with people from different corners of the sexual assault community. The first brought together institutional and organizational stakeholders. We hosted members of law enforcement, including the Sacramento Police Department, Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department, and the District Attorney’s Office. We also invited a variety of service organizations, the county-contracted rape crisis center; medical professionals who treat victims of sexual assault; nonprofits that push for sexual assault policy reform; trauma experts; and health advocates from various cultural communities.

Our second gathering involved individuals who are survivors of sexual assault. The goal was to create a safe environment for survivors to share insight with journalists and ask questions about the story process.

CapRadio will be publishing a more in-depth piece we wrote about these gatherings and what we heard from participants. But going forward, I hope to help CapRadio journalists remotely with interviews, gathering data and further exploring the challenges, issues and best practices discussed at these convenings.

We also plan to send out a large-scale survey to help us better understand survivor experiences. And we’ll consult with an advisory group — consisting of survivors, service organizations and law enforcement — at several steps along the way.

Isadora Varejão Marinho

As Documented’s audience engagement intern, I took on two different roles. I managed their Twitter and Facebook accounts, and devised strategies to grow their audience on both platforms. In my two months there, I was able to grow their following on Facebook by 56.25 percent and the average post engagement by over 100 percent. I translated their posts to Spanish and Portuguese, which allowed us to reach an immigrant audience of non-English speakers.

Offline, I was conducting a community outreach operation in Washington Heights to promote Documented’s Spanish-language WhatsApp newsletter. It uses the Broadcast List feature, which allows you to send a message to several contacts at once. The weekly round-up of immigration news prioritizes stories that are of interest of the Hispanic communities living in NY. I was able to connect Documented with 16 organizations in the neighborhood and beyond, including consulates, non-profits, libraries, churches, and community centers. Nine of them starting giving out the WhatsApp newsletter flyer.

I learned that consistent behavior and keeping promises was key to establish a connection. Journalists are perceived as self-interested people who will disappear as soon as they get what they need. When you show commitment and keep your word, people let you in.

I also learned that community outreach operations need time. Two months were enough to jumpstart the operation, but concrete results would take longer to show. Like in life, trust building takes time.

I also wrote Facebook ads promoting the English newsletter and automatic emails that are sent to new subscribers in the first three weeks of them signing up. I also participated in the writing of their Kickstarter campaign to leverage funds for their “court watch project.”

In addition to my internship at Documented, I was also a student producer at the Newsy Academy, a summer program for visiting students. After taking a five-day video production workshop at Newsy’s headquarters in Columbia, Missouri, I wrote, anchored and edited one to two news stories weekly, while receiving feedback and mentorship from the channel’s veteran journalists.

Kerem Inal

I did my summer internship at Teyit, a fact-checking organization based in Turkey. I learned a lot about fact-checking and the principles behind it.

My daily routine was to search through social media and find false news, and then write analyses to verify, or not, what I found. I had to use a variety of verification tools and basic journalism techniques to find the correct information. Tools like reverse image search and Google Maps were amongst the tools that I used the most. I conducted many verification interviews as well. I also learned my way around the Turkish legal system, allowing me to gain information as quickly as possible.

I was able to publish a total of 11 analyses. It was a great opportunity for me to see how a small fact-checking newsroom functions, and I hope to continue working on fact-checking.

Lakshmi Sivadas

One Small Step is StoryCorps’ latest national initiative that helps bridge partisan divides by bringing together strangers with opposing political ideologies to have conversations and remind each other of their shared humanity. At the end of 2018, One Small Step (OSS) had successfully completed its pilot phase, in which it partnered with and recorded interviews in select locations across the country.

As the country heads towards the 2020 elections, the initiative now plans to become a more permanent part of StoryCorps. I worked there as an expansion planning intern for two months in the summer.

I was responsible for helping the core team research and identify potential geographies for OSS 2.0 to be located out of. The locations needed to be picked based on high levels of partisan divide, potential radio and partner interest, historical election results, size of populace and other factors. I built the database and analyzed and visualized the data to help them zero in on 20 potential cities that would be the most feasible. These cities will be where One Small Step will record next.

In addition, I also helped identify potential community partners who can help them scale their efforts.. Finally, I started building case studies based on the pilot phase that will be shown to future partners to boost interest.

Lauren Costantino

At The 74 Million, I learned how to introduce innovative social journalism practices to a more traditional newsroom. Still a start-up constantly adapting to its own needs as well as changes in the industry, The 74 was the perfect place to try out new ideas on how to engage audiences.

Specifically, my summer internship work fell into three different buckets: 1) writing/reporting crowdsourced stories 2) social media strategy and production 3) audience data analysis. I was able to work closely with the CEO and come up with a plan to infuse more audience-focused practices into their newsroom. I created much needed social media posting guidelines for the company to share with their audience, so that reporters can start monitoring the feedback they receive on their stories. I created an analysis using Google Analytics data to provide insights and suggestions for future productivity.

At the end of my internship, the CEO asked me to draft a job description for a new position — Audience Engagement Editor — which is hopefully a testament to how much they now see the need for someone who can reach audiences where they are, engage people during the reporting process, and make them partners with the newsroom instead of passive recipients of stories.

A few things I produced this summer:

My piece on summer melt, an education phenomenon in which thousands of college-accepted teens (usually low-income or first-generation college students) fall off the map after graduation and ultimately never show up to college in the fall. I wrote about how some schools are using chatbots to combat this issue.
My piece on LGBTQ proms, which was developed from a pitch that was originally about a ‘Pride Prom’ launching in Orlando. But, as I reported the story, I knew that if I wanted to write about this kind of event I’d have to actually go to a prom in person. So that’s exactly what I did.
A survey I created asking readers what they wanted to hear discussed in the Democratic debates. It received over 600 votes, and about 250 people elaborated on their answers, giving us an avenue to reach back out to them in the future. I used this feedback to write a follow-up story about The 74’s audience and what they care about in terms of education — the first ever of this kind of story from this publication.

Lena Camilletti

This summer, I helped to develop and launch an online memorial project, All Our Hearts, at Seven Days in Burlington, Vermont.

Kate O’Neill lost her sister Maddie Linsenmeir last October as a result of opioid-use disorder, and wrote a moving obituary published by Seven Days that unexpectedly went viral, inspiring other people to share their own stories. Seven Days then asked O’Neill to write a series that launched earlier this year called Hooked: Stories and solutions from Vermont’s opioid crisis.

In conjunction to the Hooked series, we worked to develop All Our Hearts, a website where families and friends can tell the stories of their loved ones and the lives lost to the opioid epidemic.

One of our most time consuming, crucial goals we had this summer was to build a form that now serves as an initial survey for family and friends to fill out. It includes a variety of questions that we hope will allow people to describe their loved ones in true detail. Right now, we are in the process of gathering those stories, so we have a substantial amount to publish with the website when we launch later this year.

The process of helping to build the foundation of All Our Hearts was tedious, emotional, and full of professional and personal lessons — and remarkably fulfilling. So fulfilling, I’m not quite ready to step away from the project, so Seven Days has given me the opportunity to stay on board to continue developing it with them (which will also serve as my Social-J practicum!).

Mekdela Maskal

As community engagement fellow at THE CITY, I was brought on to manage the new Open Newsroom project. Terry Parris Jr, the engagement director, had already created a summary of the idea and the foundational partnership with Brooklyn Public Library before I joined. During my two months on the job, I researched similar public journalism meetings and community organizing efforts, set dates and planned and executed community building and communication efforts while also creating the agendas and facilitating the meetings.

We announced the project with a story and shared it with THE CITY readers through email, as well on social. The project got a lot of attention online, but more important, we had to make sure we were working with the communities we would actually be speaking with at these events (in East New York, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Red Hook). I researched grassroots organizations and reached out to them, mostly in person, to chat about what was important to them and what we are hoping to create, together, through Open Newsrooms.

We wanted to build meaningful relationships, learn about the issues most important to the communities, and understand how they like to get and share information. After the first meetings, we reviewed all the feedback and notes and published a second story that included some highlights.

By the end of summer we had held six events, two at each library, and over a hundred people had signed up. It was encouraging to see the reporters participate in the meetings and respond positively to the experience — it felt like the project had real impact in opening some minds about how journalism can be conducted in partnership with the public. We learned invaluable information about the participants that will definitely contribute to THE CITY’s reporting, and it brought people within the community closer together. The biggest challenge will be continuing the momentum and ensuring the sustainability of the project while creating tangible outcomes with the participants in round three.

I’m now working on transitioning off from being the lead contact on the project, and will continue to support Terry in planning round three. I’m also creating a thorough how-to to share widely, and will be hosting an event to share more and learn from others in the space of community organizing and public meetings.

Tiziana Rinaldi

I dedicated my summer to equipping a community of highly educated Turks in south Brooklyn, who were unemployed or underemployed, integrate professionally. This is a structural problem in the U.S. that wastes the economic potential of 29 percent of all foreign-educated immigrants.

I had connected with the Turkish group at the beginning of the master’s program through a fateful encounter with Muhammed, a former biomedical engineer with a Ph.D. from Istanbul, who at the time was driving for Uber to earn a living. I covered his story in this article for City Limits. But as a graduate student majoring in social journalism, I needed to do more to connect with the Turkish community regularly. I wanted to learn about the specific barriers that held its members back from finding skill-appropriate jobs.

And so this summer I launched The JobUp, a series of dual-track workshops with classes in English as second language and professional integration resources to help them prepare for the job market.

Here are the two Medium articles I wrote based on my experiences, which confirmed a few foundational lessons:

• Earning people’s trust is hard work and will test your determination.

• Learn about a community before working with it or meeting new members. Show that you “see” them — that you have spent time educating yourself about their culture and history. Use a visual symbol, a memento of where they come from. It will signal that you value them and help bridge the emotional distance.

• You can’t rush readiness with newcomers who, even under the best of circumstances, have to make their way in a new language and culture. Their plates may be full. Growing into their new lives takes time and a mental, psychological metamorphosis.

Tori Hoffman

This summer, I had the privilege of serving as the multimedia storytelling intern at PolicyLink, a national research and action institute that leverages data to advance racial and economic equity.

While the PolicyLink headquarters is in Oakland, California, I worked out of the communications office in Manhattan’s Financial District, supervised by Alexis Stephens, a senior communications associate at PolicyLink with a background in journalism. The communications team at PolicyLink works to disseminate messages about economic and social equity to an ever-growing audience of policymakers, equity advocates, and funders. I worked with the team to contribute original reporting that included photographs and personal narratives of the people impacted by PolicyLink equitable growth strategies and policies.

By the end of my 10-week internship, I contributed five photo essays based on field reporting in New York City, Buffalo, and Long Beach, California. Each story highlighted an issue faced by individuals and communities who are living below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. These portraits ranged from a profile of an artist whose practice focuses on “homeless cultural arts;” a recap of trainings for boys and men of color that focus on healthy expressions of masculinity; the intersection of race and gender justice and ending violence against women and girls; and an account of the largest worker-owned cooperative business in the country, which was translated into Spanish, making it accessible to company’s the largely Latinx immigrant workforce. See links to the stories below:

Now in my last semester in school, I hope to serve underrepresented communities while promoting the value of equity — just and fair inclusion into a society in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.

Zanna K. McKay

I was a production intern at StoryCorps this summer. StoryCorps is a national oral history project with the mission to “preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections.” Since its founding 15 years ago, hundreds of thousands of conversations between everyday Americans have been collected and archived at the Library of Congress. The production department’s main objective is to produce the weekly segment for NPR’s Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. The department also produces a podcast.

I spent much of the summer logging and cutting tape (interviews) to create rough cuts for the producers. Three of those were broadcast on NPR and one appeared in the podcast, my favorite of which is this one. I also spent time researching and pitching my own pieces and created a report on community engagement for the department. The highlight of the summer, besides getting do impactful work every day, was the incredible team in the production department and working alongside fellow CUNY student Harsha Nahata.